~ Update of our Jupiter in the Park event on the Gold Coast ~ Unfortunately the weather let us done again, but still a couple of hundred people turned up hoping to view the Moon and Jupiter through our telescopes. Even though we were not able to see much of the sky we spend a lot of time talking with many people about the night sky. The children just loved looking through the telescopes even through it was just at the clouds :-) All images presented in the slideshow are complements of Duncan Gillespie…thank you Duncan.

~ Huge Solar Flare blasts out from Sunspot AR2297 on the 12th March 2015 ~

~ True Ha colour image through solar scope ~

~ Monochrome image through solar scope ~

I was imaging the Sun this afternoon when a huge flash of light emanated all around Sunspot group AR2297, it was just this incredibly brilliant flash…I kept taking pictures and video until it started to quieten down.

The X2-class solar flare began at about 2.50pm AEST or 04.50am UT…it was a very exciting event to witness :-) Images taken with a Lunt 80mm solar telescope with a Canon 700D camera and 5x Barlow lens. Exposures were 1/80th second and ISO 400. Twenty images stacked in RegiStack6 and processed lightly in PS CS4.

The monochrome image was taken with the same telescope and camera but with a 2x Barlow lens for a wider view.

X2-FLARE AND RADIO BLACKOUT: All week long, sunspot AR2297 has been crackling with solar flares. Today it produced a really big one. On March 11th at 16:22 UT (09:22 PDT), Earth orbiting-satellites detected an X2-class flare. The blast zone was larger than Earth itself, as shown here in these images below from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

~ NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Image ~

‘Wow’…I can’t believe that I was looking at the Sun when this happened…it was very exciting!

WHY DO SOLAR FLARES EXPLODE?: On March 12th, NASA will launch a fleet of spacecraft to investigate the mystery of magnetic reconnection: On the sun, magnetic field lines cross, cancel, reconnect and—Bang! A solar flare explodes. How does the simple act of crisscrossing magnetic fields trigger such a ferocious blast? The Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission aims to find out. Get the full story from Science@NASA.http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2015/10mar_mms/